Over the years, human languages have evolved to adapt to communication in a shortened or abbreviated form. For example, with the popularity of instant messaging (IM) on the Internet, the use of relatively simple abbreviations of names and places has expanded to the user of abbreviations for more complex expressions. Expressions such as “You are cool,” for example, may be phonetically shortened or abbreviated as “U R Cool”.
The notion of personalized merchandise or goods also expands the application of these abbreviated or “coded” messages to different display media types. For example, vanity or personalized license plates no longer simply display the initials of a person's name. Instead, license plates may be used to communicate individualized expressions. Within the limited space of a vehicle license plate, individuals use a combination of their creativity and phonetic characteristics of message to express a desired message. For example, a personal coded message such as “LV” in the expression “I LV U” means “LOVE” as in “I LOVE YOU,” while commercial messages such as “OPEN24-7” may be interpreted as “We are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.” These shortened messages also appear in other display media such as, phone numbers, (e.g., 1-877-WORM-FREE or 1-800-CALL-ATT) or the like, some of which have a limited number of characters or spaces to display the messages or expressions. Such messages describe the words phonetically and in its entirety (i.e. as they are). These messages are also based on simple sentences often containing three or four words.
Presently, if a person desires to get a personalized or vanity license plate number communicating and/or expressing a sentence or a message, the person has to follow the requirements of the Department of Transportation (DOT) or other governing body of the particular state in which the person lives. For example, the state of Missouri first requires that each license plate has a maximum of six character spaces with six alphanumeric characters. In other states, such as Illinois, the maximum number of spaces is seven. Unfortunately, even seven character spaces do not allow a person to compose many coded sentences or messages, particularly a complex sentence and/or multiple words. This is a major restriction or limitation for current phonetic coding or abbreviation method. The details involved in creating a phonetically coded personalized automobile license plate can be found at eHow.com under “How to create a personalized license plate”.
Due to the unique nature of a license plate, many States DOT require that a given vanity/personalized license plate can be assigned to only one vehicle. For example, in Missouri, vanity plates such as “IM-TAKN” (meaning “I am taken”) or “LVU-DAD” (meaning “Love you, Dad”) can be assigned to only one vehicle. Thus, this restriction prohibits several people from expressing the same message through their personalized vehicle license plates. Moreover, space requirements on license plates and the like limit the number of possible combinations of letters and numbers available for expressing a message phonetically. As an example, phonetically expressing a desired message such as “Our children are wonderful” on a license plate and satisfying space/number of characters requirements would be practically impossible. As a negative economic consequence, the number of vanity license plates issued by a given State DOT is thus limited and the revenue generated to that State is also limited.
Also, many messages for license plates are written or abbreviated based on arbitrary or personal rules. A dictionary of commonly used vanity automobile license plate terms can be seen at the World Wide Web baac.net/michael/plates/. Note this is merely a collection of terms used in vanity plates. Since the arbitrary or personal rules are not readily known, in many cases, the general public is often unable to know the meaning or the message being communicated. In another case of a personalized plate (e.g., “IMWTIM”), although one may be able to guess the possible meanings of the message being communicated, in many others examples, one does not easily understand the meaning of the message being communicated, except for the owner of the vanity plate or when the owner shares the information.
In the area of personalized license plates, there are other regulatory limitations to be considered. As an example, the DOT may make a determination whether or not a particular message is objectionable to the general population before allowing its use on a license plate. For example, persons may express certain messages orally and/or privately but may consider them unsuitable to express in writing or in public. Even if a message is not necessarily objectionable (e.g., “my wife is sexy”), one may be uncomfortable openly or explicitly expressing these feelings in writing through a personal display medium such as the current vehicle license plate system or a T-shirt. Other problems can arise when messages have sexual connotations or express views on a particular ideology. For example, a person may wish to say that s/he hates the Republican or Democratic Party. The state government procedures or even informal rules of decorum may not allow one to express such feelings through current personalized license tags. Similar regulatory agency imposed space limitations may be found in many other countries, such as Canada, Germany, or Japan.
Additionally, due to display space limitations, one may not be able to completely display messages expressed in sentences containing many words. Even if the message is displayed, probably in small letters on a display space, as an example, a mug or a personal wear such as a T-shirt, a reader must be fairly close to the displayed space, which may not always be possible or feasible or appropriate, to read the sentences.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,760,528; 4,969,097; 5,305,205; 5,623,406 and 6,279,018 describe rules that are useful to the development of abbreviations of text for speedy inputs to computers. U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,377,965; 6,775,663; 6,901,364 and 7,010,478 claim information coding and retrieval systems as a part of search engine system. The U.S. Pat. No. 7,069,265 discloses a search engine system with coding information and a search method using the same. Since per above mentioned patent, a plurality of different words having similar or same meanings is coded as one standard word, this method is confusing and not suitable to unambiguously derive a code clearly communicating the desired message in the given sentence. In the U.S. Pat. No. 7,315,902 a method for compressing and abbreviating text messages by using standard abbreviations and/or known compressive transformations, and subsequent interpretation is disclosed. These abbreviation rules are complicated and mechanistic in nature. Importantly, upon expanding or reversing the shortened text message, one only gets an approximation to the original message or a list of many possible full length versions of meanings. The compressed and abbreviated text messages based on prior art methods could not meet the government or the industry imposed space limitations or the number of character restrictions on a personalized or individualized display space and unambiguously communicate the desired message in a coded form on such display space. Importantly the above mentioned prior art approaches suffer a serious drawback. The coded or reduced or abbreviated character sets when decoded have multiple meanings, i.e. the coded text communicates an ambiguous meaning with multiple possibilities of subsequent interpretations. The US application (US 2007/0175073) describes a more readily identifiable license plate with an emphasis on apprehending child abductors. Thus, these prior art methods are not suitable to unambiguously create a coded message clearly communicating the desired message as the coded message.
Thus, a creative, novel and practical message communication system and method for unambiguously and non-phonetically coding a sentence or a message is desirable to overcome the above restrictions and/or similar limitations. A system and method for unambiguously and non-phonetically coding a sentence or message is also desirable in which a set of uniform rules and guidelines is provided that can be easily practiced by many.